When Duke Johnson made the Oscar-nominated animated function “Anomalisa” with Charlie Kaufman, Kaufman Johnson suggested reading “Memory”, a lost Donald Westlake novel that had recently been published. (Kaufman had heard of its resurrection on NPR.) The novel, about a man named Paul Cole, who is stranded in a small town with a head injury after being attacked by the envious husband of Paul’s Lover, had ended in 1963 and traded around by Westlake, without being attacked. An attempt was made in the 1970s to trade it again, but Westlake, one of the great American crime writers, declined. After his death in 2008, it was finally published by Hard Case Crime two years later.
“(Kaufman) told me that he really liked it, because what was interesting about it is that it is by this famous crime writer and that it was in the form of a noir thriller, where memory loss is usually used as a trope to drive a plot forward,” Johnson said. “And in this case it seemed as if it could go that direction, but it ended up being used more as a meditation on the nature of identity and it was a really interesting subversion of expectations and use of that device. I was fascinated by it.”
Johnson came back to Kaufman and told him how much he had had the novel. “He was like,” Well, if you like it so much, you should choose it and make a movie from it. “” Johnson was hesitant that the alternative would be available – after all it was Donald Westlake – but it was. He snapped the option. “That’s how it came to me,” Johnson said.
As it turns out, it was the beginning of a very long journey.
In 2015, Johnson and his writing partner had completed a first draft of the script – “basically the book in script form,” Johnson said. According to Johnson, the novel has a lot of protagonist Paul Cole’s “internal monologue stuff, and it is always difficult to translate into a sound/visual experience.” Johnson held the alternative on the book but in 2019 they would end time again. Johnson then decided to make his own passport on the novel.
“It was when I began to imagine how I could visualize this internal experience that Paul went through and gave myself the freedom to change the book to a certain degree,” Johnson said. In the fall of 2019, that version of the script went out to actors. One of the actors who responded well to the material was Ryan Gosling.
“I met him a couple of times, and then he came on board, and I started working with him in his store production unit as he has,” Johnson remembered. “We started to develop it. And Ryan’s strategy is a lot Let’s tear everything apart and put it together again and try many different things. “This was during the pandemic, when” no one worked. “Johnson and Gosling would talk on the phone all the time and were constantly working on the script, they tried” a more thriller-driven iteration and a little more rom-com-switched iteration and taught us what we could get from these things. ” It was “perhaps less suitable for him as an actor.” “And when you try to get into scheduling things are really complicated,” said Johnson, Anon suggested, in “High Flying Bird” and his brilliant, short -lived series “The Knick. “I had met André before, and I loved him,” Johnson said. Oh yes, this movie is meant to be a vehicle for André. “(Gosling remained an executive producer.)
Holland had known the “actor” producer Abigail Spencer Forever – her best friend from high school was his college roommate. “We used to all spend time in Tallahassee, Florida, back during the day,” Holland said. He came across Spencer on an Oscar party a few years ago. Johnson was there and they got to talk. “We said, ‘Why can’t we find anything?'” The Netherlands remembered. At that time, Holland said, Johnson told him, “I actually have one thing I want to come to you.” That thing was the “actor.”
Part of Johnson’s pitch to Holland involved the idea of throwing a “company by actors, mainly theater actors and getting them to play several parts.” This appealed to Holland, which has a theater background. It also made him a little jealous. “I was just thinking, Man, what a cool idea. And as much as I wanted to play my part I was like, too Dang, I wish I could play one of the other parts“Said Holland. The Troup finally included” Moon Knight “crime May Calamawy, Simon McBurney and the legendary Tracey Ullman.
Of course, with the Netherlands as leader, took “The Actor” in another form. And had different parameters. “It’s a smaller movie than it might be, but it probably shouldn’t have been a big movie. It’s probably more suitable for this scale, especially this experimental art house that we played with,” Johnson said. Johnson had collected all these visual motives he wanted to play with and Holland “as always, my foundation, emotionally authentic center.”
Further complicated questions were that the “actor” was Johnson’s first move to live-action film creation. He said that because he was a teenager he made live-action movies. It was only after graduation NYU and AFI that he had the opportunity to work in animation and “fell in love with it.” Johnson said he was approaching the animation “on a very live action”. In animation the camera can do something But Johnson appreciated having the camera “more founded in a world of what is possible in the natural world.” He was interested in more human stories. As he approached the “actor”, he used everything he had learned in animation and the process he had developed. “I like to see behind the curtain. I like manufactured worlds. I love world -building because you have such an opportunity to tell to build a tailor -made world that is infused with the ideas and themes in history as you tell,” Johnson said. These ideas lent perfectly to the “actor.”
The “ticking clock” aspect of live -action was, said Johnson, “a freaking nightmare.” And everything is so expensive. They could not shoot the movie affordable in America, so they traveled to Budapest and made the movie in a “busy layer in the middle of the winter.” They built a fictional city in Ohio in the middle of Hungary. “It was definitely not comfortable, all the time it freezes outside,” Holland said. “Even in the sound scene it would sometimes be really, really cold.” Still, Holland said, “Duke had this warmth that made everyone happy to come to work. There were some difficult days and some challenges. But it was really like such a joy to do it.”
The film’s artifice and imagination are brought to life, brilliantly, in an extended tracking of shots through a production in which the Holland’s character is in. “All the sets he goes through are actually the real sets in the film,” Johnson said.
Even after the production that was packed in April 2023, the film entered a long -term post -production period. Johnson said he was very ambitious when it comes to what he wanted to achieve, even though he had a budget that was “much less” than they reported $ 6 million in Neon’s breakthrough, Oscar-winning “Anora.” “I just didn’t have enough time to shoot everything, and I didn’t get as much coverage as I needed,” Johnson said. “I just didn’t get everything I needed.”
“I know that Duke is really a perfectionist and wanted it to be the best it could be. I got to watch him along the way, when he made the movie better, continues to get better and better and better,” Holland remembered. “There were points where I was like, Man, I think he’s ready. And he’s like, “Nah, there are only one or two other things I want to do.” And he was right. These things made a big difference. I really admire it for him. And he is not willing to settle. “
Johnson wanted to adjust the stimulation and reinforce what had been shot. And since Johnson has a stop-motion animation studio in Los Angeles, Starburns Industries, complete with scenes, he spoke into action. “I’m always like, I can build a miniature. I can’t afford a Drone shot of a bus that drives through the snow, but I can build a small set and I can build a bus, and I can animate it myself. I can get in on a Saturday and animate that busWhich I did, “Johnson said. He asked animator friends to make matte paintings. He could” expand that world and add all customized craft elements that I wanted to shape the world that I had no time or money to do in Budapest. “He didn’t have money in LA either, but if he took the time and asked friends for favors and did things himself, he could achieve what he wanted.
Following the success of “Anomalisa,” Johnson said he could turn on larger studio films, including a sequel to Jim Henson’s David Bowie-led fantasy “Labyrinth” (the involved “Jennifer Connelly’s daughters”) and a live-action “Swan Lake” that Disney was preparing for the fun throughout “I love ballet,” Johnson said. But he got nothing. He said the idea of using all the tools in a large budget film is still appealing (“I would not reject a studio image”), but that his next project is a hybrid of live-action and stop-motion animation.
“I’m really excited about it – it’s Super Top Secret but it’s a hybrid situation,” Johnson said. “I basically return to my stop-motion roots. Very excited.”
The “actor” is in theaters now.
